3:45 am
by Kuro Guardian
Summary: And maybe you should sleep, and maybe you just need a friend... There's noone laughing..


The sky is clear as moonlight and dark as dreams as he streams down the street amid a thousand lesser souls. This feeling like nothingness, this weightless, pressure-less energy that bears him as it has borne him a million times before, will bear him a million times more quakes to the world's pulse. A pulse that shakes the paper-thin city crinkling in the windless void of now. The world has stopped but for the motion carried on from the corner of his straining eyes heat like a breath of fresh air streaming from the maelstrom behind them.

He isn't tired, but he refuses to wake knowing that his tormented conscious will not condone the night fearing his becoming. He can't remember the last time it rained like now, then feeling like it should be raining now, then deciding it possibly is raining in some unknown country far round the bend. The wall is smooth despite the grooves he carved into it upon waking. Eventually.

He sleeps until they wake him sometime past noon. He can't ever seem to wake before noon anymore. His eyes are grey with fatigue, but no one notices - no one dares notice because no one wants to break the fragile peace. With eyes forever burning with a need to rest he can nearly see it - the crystalline tension that is all that is holding the Leaf piece by piece together. It sings as he breathes, sings quiet desperate songs of gentle madness and brown hair over feral eyes over bright, bright white canines remark that he has a fair enough voice. He smiles and seeks to dream of white, white teeth 'neath bright red eyes.

His mind is like a sieve for warnings. Pill bottle rolls round it's self empty, yawning like the hours before him. Bright iridescent pink hair and emerald nightlight eyes she wags her finger when she gives them to him. No more then twice the normal dose and really that's too much for him. Burns his eyes wide tired and sleep doesn't come because he's so fucking unreal.

Glides smooth his guilt over lies so totally natural he glides looking neither left nor right. He moves down the street like a camera on a track - perception without effort. The sky is grey, the city blue periwinkle the color of dusk, of twilight. A building collapses into it's self as sleek paws traipse daintily 'tween canyons of stone and mortar. The City, his city cascades in surreal rushes of slow motion. The pain in his cheeks might mean he's smiling; can't tell perception wrong first person only. The city is dark, the city is grey, overhead impulsive jutsu fireworks embroider a sky as red as his eyes.

He wakes to the taste of memory - puddle water in his mouth ashes floating down like flash frozen rain as weightless and inevitable as the perfect murder. The blaze is warm, smoke like a mother's arms pale with blood loss speckled with needy blue. It smells like October, like Oban and suddenly he's standing at his unlocked door resenting the lingering hand on his shoulder. He doesn't have his keys, but his door is open and his bed unmade laughing teasingly like a wife newly made. 'Peter, Peter Pumpkin eater had a wife but couldn't keep 'er.' Feeling nothing he slips into an effortless zero-grav roll right between the sheets as the sun becomes a poppy time-lapse into morning. His hands are cracked and his nails a pearly blue.

He watches himself in 2nd person view wondering what level of crazy 3rd perception might mean. The little girl is terrified. Drenched in living color amidst the useless grey surroundings. She's badly frightened says he number 2, yes but she is beautiful in her terror says the other number 1; haunting says he. Orange and red and black and white is the pretty little frightened girl. 2nd is grateful there is no sound so that he only has to turn away. There is a lurid trail struggling back through the grey purple town - it's no surprise that it's red and vicious. Wait, 2nd says, we aren't awake. All the better, says 1st, no need for guilt.

He isn't getting better listening to the world pulse in sympathetic to head sickness. The scent of water clogs his nose as his perceptions overlay the grey colorless sky meeting the grey under grasp of his lifeless eyes. Bloodshot eyes and bubble gum hair tangled in the admonishing words "you need to sleep more, training to death won't help." She never did understand, sensei leaning lackadaisical worry under the tree orange book bright while the rest fades away.

Her hand grips his wrist as she drags him home almost. He watches her watch him watch them because she is bolder now pearlescent eyes like the Dark City. And she is haunting says 1, she is here says 2. He buries the red beneath the soft, half-thawed grey hands like claws. Claws for hands. "I nearly loved." Staggers home legs like misplaced space feeling more awake all the time.

The forest is lovely dark and deep, but he has promises to keep and miles to go before he sleeps miles like light years too enormous to truly exist. His mind wonders as he follows the trails the mask men leave, limbs begging to sleep as his empty head floats forward. Forward seeking for the men beneath the shells - lullabies of violence sung by the jaded and guardians who loved to fuck with his head. A smile like flowers of flesh and blood mouths in the irises. He remembers them, has never forgotten a face, a voice, a hit. Kakashi-sensei the dog, Yamato-sensei the bird, Ibiki the Locust. He knows them. He stalks them seeing time out of sky.

He sees them he knows them the blood beneath his hands, under his nails test papers amongst the gore as crimson bubbles skate across bathtub ponds allowing him to fall through drift and drown. "You should have taken better care of me", says number two watching number one peel off mask after mask until he's peeling off skin. Paring the man's head like an apple and it doesn't matter if it's necessary. They sing the kunai he pins to the wall though the yielding flesh oil and springtime liberally poured over the struggling bastard slicking down the bright hair. "You set me afire; I'll now return the favor."

Like firewood and building blocks, they stack so neatly as he puts them together amidst the trees and sprinkles them with Anbu dust remembering the masks, the signs like always. The smell is horrible but this game is done and that is all that matters. He doesn't remember closing his eyes but he must have to else how is he sitting here on his bed twirling a cracked mask. "Are they dead?" No one answers but he knows there isn't much time left and no leeway at all. "Bastards", says two, "Fuckers" says one. "Die", says he.

"What was that?" Pastels like faded pictures, pale pink hair over grey-green eyes; ice-blue eyes under bright white hair over baby blue mask. Ice blue eyes - there's something wrong with that, but he can't think what. He could fall now and never touch the ground - all of him weightless, lifeless unable to get that smell out of his nose. She's saying something he doesn't want to hear volume four times what it needs to be. Kakashi eyes him, all his attention actually focused on him for once and he knows what 1 and 2 will say. "Are you listening?" It's easier to say yes then to explain he hasn't heard a word she's had to say for nearly as long as he can remember. 'Course he can't remember anything past last week.

The white city and the dark city aren't the same exactly, but its close enough for 1 to scream with laughter. They lie beneath his feet unaware, uncomprehending, utterly unprepared. "Follow, follow, follow!" The pitiful guards come at him Kakashi-sensei among them. 2nd sits upon the bright roof, upon the bright roofs shouting directions while weapons bounce harmlessly off his bright red shield. 'Left, right, duck!' They taunt the struggling fools as Naruto watches with a sleepy grin 3rd meanwhile setting fatal traps for the guileless lambs coming ever closer. Kakashi should really know better, but that doesn't matter 1 and 2 soon to be eaten by 3rd eventually.

The sky is a ruptured belly spilling the innards of some fantastical beast down upon them. The Fourth stands upon Gamabunta, the fox glowers at him and glares at Him. The Shingami smiles at them both her black eyes crinkled happily. The city is burning, the city is falling - the world is purple. He glides through the purple world amidst the burning, falling city and the discordant memories half-remembered now lived. He is bemused and bloody his hands unsightly from breaking the many souls he has. He smiles and the world writhes in delight - He is Triumph, He is the Third, He is the only one who matters. The only one to have ever mattered.

The dust is a coverlet over him. The sun bright through the cover of windborne debris. He wakes to a colorless wasteland his eyes clearer then they've ever been. He stands legs wobbling beneath him. The green chain about his neck seems to point west.


End file.
